


On the Back of the Tiger

by otter



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:52:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otter/pseuds/otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah adjusts to a new kind of life; Daniel's still not quite adjusted to life at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Back of the Tiger

He watches Sarah and he wonders if it would've been like this for Sha're. Would she have wandered the room like Sarah was doing, looking at everything but interested in none of it? Would she have been this wounded, this drawn and silent, her face this pinched and her eyes this hollow? Sarah moves as if she's forgotten how her limbs work, as if she still hasn't quite realized that there's no snake pulling her strings.

Daniel says nothing, but he thinks that maybe it's a mercy Sha're is dead.

Sarah stops at the desk, her fingers skimming over the surface of a ceremonial mask from P2X-992. She says, "I see," but she doesn't explain.

He waits a moment longer for some other sign of life, then Daniel clears his throat and says, "I spoke with General Hammond. There's a position for you here, when the debriefing process is finished."

She scowls, and he's actually glad; it's the first flicker of emotion he's seen for awhile. "Yes," she says. "'Debriefing.' What a wonderful understatement."

Daniel winces a little and looks down at the floor. "I know," he says. "But you can't expect to walk out of here and pick your life where you left it. What you know now is... you can help us fight the Goa'uld."

The sound she makes could be described as laughter, but he wouldn't choose that word for it. It's brittle, with sharp edges. Just like her. "You can't fight them," she says. She squeezes her eyes shut and sways a little into the desk, like she's suddenly lost the energy to stand.

She doesn't flinch when he slips his arm around her shoulders and eases her into his desk chair. He considers it progress. "Easy," he murmurs, but she just slumps into the chair and doesn't move.

He leans on the edge of the desk and watches her for awhile, while she sits and stares at nothing, and then her eyes catch on the photos on his desk. She leans forward and picks up the portrait of Sha're, her fingers brushing over the glass, touching a brow, a cheek, the fine line of an eyebrow rendered in shades of gray.

She doesn't ask who the woman in the photo is, but Daniel can feel the question hanging in the air, as if it's already been spoken but somehow hasn't reached his ears yet. He says, "Sha're. My wife."

Sarah hums under her breath and says, "Beautiful."

Daniel shudders, because her voice is a half-interested drawl, like she's sizing up livestock. He says, "She died some time ago. She was... taken, by Apophis."

Sarah shudders, too, and puts the picture back. She wipes her fingertips against the leg of the medical scrubs she wears. "She was a slave?" she asks.

"A host," Daniel corrects. "To Amaunet."

Sarah says, "I see," again, and then is silent. After a time, she says, "I'm very tired; I think I should go back to the infirmary." He walks along with her, to make sure she gets there, but she doesn't speak again. She curls up on her assigned bed, and he almost reaches out to touch her, but instead he lets his hand drop, and walks silently away.

\---

When she's cleared to leave the base, she moves in with Daniel. They don't really discuss it; he picks her up from her VIP room and drives her back to his place. He sleeps on the couch, and she sleeps fitfully, and though they both have nightmares with disturbing frequency, they don't talk about it, or much of anything else, for the week that they share the house. After that, he leaves for a five-day mission to P9X-223, which turns into three weeks when flood waters cut them off from the Gate and they have to wait for the waters to fall. He sees four children drown when they venture too close to a crumbling riverbank, and there's nothing he can do but watch them be swept away.

When he finally gets home, he feels half-mad and perpetually damp. He drops his bag in the hallway and calls out Sarah's name. He knows she's home; he checked up on her while he was at the base, looked into her timesheets and saw she had a car checked out from the motorpool. Silence greets his call, and he's about to speak again when she finally emerges from the direction of the bedroom. She looks pale and her hands tremble a little.

He wants to ask what's wrong, but he doesn't, because she twists her fingers into his BDU jacket and tugs it off his shoulders, and distracts him with her mouth against his. It isn't something he wants to get into, isn't a past he wants to drag into his present, isn't a complication he wants to add to his already overly-complicated life. But when she kisses him, he can almost forget those little bodies tumbling downward, and how the splashes couldn't even be heard over the roar of the water. So he kisses her back.

When they're in his bed and naked, twined together and both reaching for something that's completely beyond their grasp, he notices the wounds under his hand. They're thin, shallow little cuts, all in a neat line up the inside of her soft white thigh. He traces them with his fingers; one is so fresh, it's still warm and bleeding a little. But when he opens his mouth to say something, she hushes him with her tongue, pushes with her hips, until she's straddling him and her fingers close around his wrists.

She says, "I never asked for this."

He says, "I know."

But she just shakes her head and says, "No, you don't."

She holds him down as she fucks him, and he lets her, because she seems to need it. Her teeth are clenched and she snarls when she comes. He remembers a time when he used to look into her eyes and see softness and candlelight and sweet adoration.

He looks into them now and sees a smoldering ruin that used to be Moscow.

She says, "I never asked for this," and her voice is a hiss and she's squeezing his wrists so tight that his fingertips are a little numb. "I want things to be how they were before."

He can't think of anything else to say, so he whispers, "I'm sorry. We can't go back to who we were when we were together."

She laughs and releases him abruptly, steps gracefully off the bed, unselfconscious in a way the old Sarah never would have been. The yellow glow of streetlights touches her through the window and she's covered in gold, an entirely different creature, but not an unfamiliar one. He's met her before.

She says, "I had a fleet once, and armies. I had power, unimaginable power." When she looks at him, there's only the faintest quiver of emotion, trembling through her body. "I never asked to be rescued, Daniel."

He sits up and holds his head in his hands, doesn't look at her because he isn't sure he can. He doesn't know where to go from here.

For a few minutes she just watches him, silent and assessing, a stranger in his bedroom. Finally she says, "Do you think that -- what was her name? Sha're? Do you think that Sha're would have come back to you as she was? Do you think she would've been so strong?"

"No." He only whispers it, but she doesn't need to hear. She knows the answer.

"And would you--" Her voice falters -- so much like Sarah, and so different -- so she starts over. "And would you be so strong?"

The sound he makes could've been a laugh, but he wouldn't have called it that. It's brittle, with sharp edges, just like him. He says, "No. No, I wouldn't." He closes his eyes, and watches Moscow burn.

the end

_"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln_


End file.
